So so so many things in this world would be easier if people could just communicate clearly. It's like... nobody wants to actually say what they mean, or they just want to string you along because they don't want to be the one to make any kind of decision...
It's infuriating. I like things to be clear-cut and well-defined. When I receive a letter from my employer saying that if I don't get an extension from my doctor, my leave is getting terminated and they'll consider an absence of communication my wish to discontinue my employment, and put a date-effective on it, I expect that "Okay. My shrink won't sign off on it, but my doctor doctor thinks I can go back to work because my stomach's not fucked up any more" translates to "gg, you don't have a job." Following that, I should be able to get the ball rolling on things like unemployment, foodstamps, career development... Basically, that's us agreeing that it's not you, it's me, and it's time for us to all move on.
Now the people from unemployment are telling me that I'm not in the computers or something, the stuff I sent them to verify my employment wasn't enough, and I need to get some kind of payroll history, and now I get a letter from my former employer that I owe them money for my insurance.
Which is news to me, because I thought I'd lost my insurance. But whatever.
Then, to top it all off, my girlfriend picks today to bring up the fact that we're in pretty dire financial straits. As if that's not racing through my mind at every minute of every goddamn day. It's well-intentioned, I know. She's worried about us, and the house, and everything else, and getting a call from unemployment saying they need all this stuff from me still when I was thinking I'd jumped through all the requisite hoops was an unpleasant shock.
I should have taken the appointment my shrink offered me earlier. She had a 2pm cancellation. If I'd gone to that, we could have avoided that whole messy shouting and tears incident.
I want to work. I want to be one of those people who's got a steady job, forty or fifty hours a week, doing something if not meaningful at least useful. I'm smart, I'm well-educated (in spite of not having a college degree), and I'm a driven worker. I'm comfortable taking the lead on projects, thrive in environments where I'm challenged or encouraged to develop and optimize new procedures, and strive to become an expert in whatever I'm doing.
But I don't like not being in control of variables, or at least not being able to mitigate the damage when things go wrong. It's hard for me to cope with double standards, broken lines of communication, and favoritism. And I expect things to be fair, even though I know they almost never are...and get angry when they're not.
I should probably not be putting this online, but hell. What's there to lose? My employers find it out pretty quickly, anyway, either on the application or in interviews. I used to lie, and hide my flaws, and try to be the perfect candidate, but all that's gotten me is a forearm-long medicine list and a resume that shows almost annual job changes. Because that's about how long it takes for an employer to realize just how flawed I really am, and me to decide I need to quit before they fire me.
Maybe it's just arrested development or something. Some lingering "I don't wanna and you can't make me" kind of temper tantrum mentality. Or maybe it's just a mental block, because surely if I've had such bad experiences in the past, I'm bound to have them again. Who knows? I just feel any more like if I could have a quiet cubicle or office somewhere, and someone just fed me a stack of things to analyze, or fix, or edit, or whatever, I'd be perfectly functional. And maybe even able to help people, or the company I work for.
I really should have gone to that appointment today. Hopefully she'll have another cancellation soon. And hopefully I get some good news from either unemployment or a job soon. -.- Just need to keep plugging along with my writing, I guess.
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